Crowdfunding the Greek Bailout

Recently it was announced that a British man trying to crowdfund the Greek Bailout raised a six figure sum. While the campaign hopes to raise the 1.5 billion EU that Greece owes the IMF, the fund so far has raised just over 170, 000 EU. The campaigner, Thom Feeney claimed that all of this news regarding the Default is getting boring so he proposed that we, as a global community collectively pool money to repay the debt.

Crowdfunding through sites like Indie Gogo and Kickstarter has been a fairly commonplace occurrence over the past few years. However, this particular campaign is distinct from others. Instead of trying to fund an indie film, a tech gadget, or even a vacation, Thom Feeney decided to try his hand at bailing out a country from a massive amount of debt.

But what does such a bold act tell us? Although the current funds pledged are nowhere near those necessary to pay Greek’s debt to the IMF, the fact that over 11,000 people committed monetary support to this cause says something. Streamlined tools like Kickstarter and Indie-gogo make it so easy to learn about and donate to all kinds of causes. These sites are tapping into a desire to do good on the part of the donor, but there seems to be more than that going on here. Sites like Indie-gogo and Kickstarter provide a sense of agency for the users. Thom Feeney was able to identify a need that anyone who reads the news knows about, but was otherwise incapable of doing anything about it.

To be realistic, Thom Feeney’s Indie-gogo campaign probably won’t hit the proposed goal of 1.5 billion in the designated amount of time that it’s allowed to run. However, his bold act serves as a reminder of the power vested in these platforms for crowdfunding.